Bangalore-based online cab booking service TaxiForSure seems to have quietly launched its own in-app prepaid wallet to offer cashless taxi rides. (hat tip - Ashish Sinha). We are not quite sure as to when the company rolled out this service, although TaxiForSure co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna had told Livemint earlier in the month that they have already readied a mobile wallet and they plan to launch it this year. Interestingly, this launch comes on heels of TaxiForSure's competitors Olacabs and Meru Cabs launching a similar in-app prepaid wallet last month. We tried the wallet feature on Nexus 4 and noticed that one can recharge their wallet through credit or debit card or through net banking and then use this to pay for taxi rides, quite similar to how the wallets from Olacabs and Meru Cabs work. Who is powering it? What's currently not clear is with whom TaxiForSure has partnered to offer this wallet service. Note that like Olacabs, TaxiForSure primarily acts as a taxi aggregator and doesn’t own these taxis. Hence, a closed wallet cannot be used for making these third party transactions. It would need a semi-closed prepaid wallet license or at least a tie-up with a company which has the same license. (More on wallets below). We're currently awaiting a response from TaxiForSure on this. Uber vs RBI Note that Uber has been offering cashless taxi rides since its launch in India, although the service was limited to credit cards and the company was routing their transactions through foreign payment gateways, that allowed them to charge customers for recurring transactions without the RBI’s…
